“Generally, my strategy is to archive anything that does not need immediate attention so that every item in my inbox represents something that I need to do. This departs from some people’s strategy of using read vs. unread to denote items needing attention. I personally like to keep things clean and as such use the Archive function for inbox management frequently (I’d go crazy if I saw 4,300 messages in my Inbox like most people keep).”

It could also be that by this point you know all the tricks. You’ve read all our articles, you’ve delegated, created filters, refused to look at it between the hours of 2 and 4, or have just shut it straight off. But as NPR’s All Tech Considered points out, “remember that overload is a matter of perspective.”

“We could also say when we walk out the front door of where we live, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s so many blades of grass, I have lawn overload,” says Stone. “It’s really all about what’s our point of view on it? Are these things really flying at us, or are we not making the choices we need to make?”

I use my email inbox like a todo list. If it’s important, I’ll answer. If not, I’ll archive. If it’s on hold, I’ll star it. The key to making this work is to not sign up for things you don’t need.

Sasha

My partner does the strategy of having one email for promotional/junk/deals and a separate account (tied together through gmail) for his personal stuff. I can’t attest to it myself but it seems to work for him!

Joshua Cox

I create folders such as ‘to do’ and ‘follow up on.’ To do would be more time sensitive. I also forward things I need reminders on to evernote since I use outlook web app and it has no way to set a reminder.